Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Today's Exciting News

Update: My friend and brother Marine John Payne got the call
for a new lung at about 8:30 am this morning (Tuesday, December 17, 2013). He
is now scheduled for surgery tonight about 11:00 pm. We are both O blood type,
but I'm not surprised. I told the transplant coordinator that I thought John
was weaker than me, and should go first. Personally, I think John arranged this
to skate out on PT this morning. (I had to work extra hard to make up for it!) If
you are the praying type, say one for that good man. ~Bob

Excerpt: Fox News confirmed the troops were part of
the NATO force
but were Americans. (Met a nice young couple at breakfast today with a sweet
3-month-old girl. Said they have 3 boys as well. He is in the Army, just back
from Afghanistan,
an EOD specialist. A Merry Christmas for this family. ~Bob)

Good Column: A Few Random Thoughts - Some
Grinchy *</;-{)}>. By Andy Weddington

Excerpt:
For today, a little humor; less humor; opinion; sarcasm; cynicism; witty
repartee; art; recommendations; and seasonal spirit but all truth to
entertain while keeping in mind the worst of it could always be worse
(maybe).

Excerpt: For all the fretting about getting past a GOP
filibuster on the budget deal, itwasn’t all that
close. The Senate easily invoked cloture 67 to 33, with 12
Republicans joining all Democrats. Republicans needed to contribute only five
votes, so 12 was impressive considering the grief they’ll get from the
shutdown-squad types and the prospect of primary challenges many senators face
in 2014.

Excerpt: The easy explanation for Obama’s fall is the
horrendous rollout of Obamacare, the “lie of the year” (also a top Pinocchio of the
year) about keeping your insurance and general dislike of the
healthcare law beyond the healthcare.gov. But let’s be clear how rotten a year
it has been even aside from the Obamacare fiasco.

Excerpt: An article in
the current edition of London Review of Books by Seymour Hersh makes
a strong case that US President Obama misled the
world over the infamous chemical weapons attack near Damascus on August 21 this
year. Hersh is
the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposed the My Lai atrocity committed
by American troops in Vietnam
and the subsequent cover-up. He also helped bring to public attention the systematic
brutality of US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. (Drip by
drip, even the LIVs are figuring out this guy cannot be trusted. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Yesterday, Judge Brian
Cogan of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York,
not only struck down Obamacare's
contraception mandate as applied to religious non-profit organizations, but
also sent a strong signal that federal courts were losing patience with
President Obama's many stitches of executive power.

Excerpt: ...And the fraud didn't even have anything to do
with global warming! (Rimshot).
Seriously, though, NBC News' Monday report on the misconduct of former EPA
official John Beale is must be read to be believed. Honestly, if the following
details didn't involve a lazy, greedy congenital liar swindling taxpayers out
of nearly a million dollars over more than a decade of abuse, they'd be
laugh-out-loud funny. Alas, it's
all true, so indignation is the only proper response:

Gruesome allegations have emerged in South Africa that
the “fake” sign language interpreter at the Nelson Mandela memorial service was
involved in a mob which killed two men by burning them to death. Thamsanqa
Jantjie is currently the subject of an inquiry into how he was allowed to
appear at the service a week ago alongside world leaders, including US
President Barack Obama….A cousin and three friends of Mr Jantjie have now said
he was part of a group which caught two men with a stolen television, beat them
and then set fire to tyres placed around their necks. (Can't hold this against
him. Necklaceing was SOP in Mandela's South Africa. ~Bob)

Excerpt: But it turns out that some
of the biggest ObamaCare losers in the country are liberal elites living in the
media capital of the world. And, though they thought the whole concept of
bringing government into the health-care business was great, they are none too
pleased about personally being victimized by the president’s big idea. As
the New York Times reported over the weekend, some prominent
New York City
liberals have recently found out just how unaffordable the so-called Affordable
Care Act turned out to be. (Gee, they are discovering how the little
people feel. They will figure out a way to get around it because they are
liberals. --Don M.)

Have You Heard About The $36 Million Money Pit In Afghanistan
That The Army Isn’t Explaining And That Could Fall Into Enemy Hands? By Sara Carter

Excerpt: After more than six months and several letters of
inquiry, the U.S. chief watchdog for reconstruction in Afghanistan is still
waiting for the U.S. Army to explain why it invested $36 million in taxpayer
money to construct a building that’s been abandoned, left unfinished and could
possibly end up in enemy hands when troops withdraw from the region next year.
(The left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. it isn't their money,
so no one cares --Don M.)

Excerpt: The Black Guerilla Family prison gang controlled
the BaltimoreCity jail. According to a federal
indictment, 27 correctional officers, along with 17 others, "were in bed
with BGF inmates." That would be literally and figuratively. Gang leader
Tavon White impregnated no fewer than four female guards. One had "Tavon"
tattooed on her wrist.

Excerpt: A senior al Qaeda operative known as Abu Khalid al Suri is a leading figure in Ahrar al Sham, a
Syrian extremist group that is part of the recently formed Islamic Front. Al Suri's real name is Mohamed
Bahaiah.

Excerpt: Camille Bomboy was hunting for deer on her farm property
when she was mauled by a bear who was concerned for the 18-year-old hunter’s
proximity to her cub. Miss Bomboy was lucky, though, as she only received
gashes to her arms and is still in possession of her head. Naturally, the
leftists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have reprimanded
the young woman in a letter.

Our President Is A
Fool: How the West was Lost by the Selfie President

Excerpt: It’s official — the government of the United States
of Obama consists of boobs and bores and is led by a narcissist. It is no
consolation that Great
Britain joins us in racing to the bottom.
President Obama’s flirting with Denmark’s
prime minister would be shameful on any occasion. That it happened at the
memorial for Nelson Mandela only adds to the embarrassment (As does his photo
with his "Mussolini" pose. --JB)

Excerpt: We are fast approaching what promises to be the
year of “comprehensive immigration reform.” In the manner of the “Affordable
Care Act,” it will not be comprehensive nor will it reform immigration. All
sorts of new trends have emerged in the American Southwest to address the fact
that federal immigration law does not really apply to those who arrived here
illegally from Mexico or Latin America. (Am I for "immigration
reform?" Yes I am--if by "reform" you mean a bigger fence and
more armed border guards. ~Bob)

Excerpt: A British surgeon, imprisoned in Syria for over
a year, has died in detention, his family has told the BBC. Dr Abbas Khan, a
32-year-old orthopaedic surgeon from Streatham, south London,
travelled to the city of Aleppo
last year to help civilians.

Didn't get the "Islam is a Religion of Peace"
memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: More than 70 people were killed in a string of attacks
across Iraq
on Monday, including 37 Shiites preparing for an annual pilgrimage, among them
a group who were pulled out of a bus and shot dead on the roadside, the police
said.

Excerpt: “Every major city which is a center of poverty is
run by Democrats. Every major city. Their policies have failed, they’re not
willing to admit and the fact is it’s the poor who suffer from bad government.”

Excerpt: First, I acknowledge that capitalism fails
miserably when compared with heaven or a utopia. Any earthly system is going to
come up short in such a comparison. However, mankind must make choices among
alternative economic systems that actually exist on earth. For the common man,
capitalism is superior to any system yet devised to deal with his everyday
needs and desires.

Excerpt: On Monday, a Federal District
Court judge ruled that
the National Security Agency's collection and storage of all Americans' phone records probably
violates the Constitution and is an "almost Orwellian" system that
"surely...infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders
enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.

Excerpt: China
claimed Tuesday that a clash between police and locals in a restive far western
region was an organized and premeditated attack by a small terrorist group. The
official Xinhua News Agency said that 16 people were killed in the Sunday night
incident — 14 assailants and two police officers — in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, home to
a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule among parts of the Muslim Uighur
population who want more autonomy from Beijing.
(Jihadists and Communist killing each other. Please pass the popcorn, I want to
watch. ~Bob)

Excerpt: In future China
will employ millions of American workers and dominate thousands of small
communities all over the United
States. Chinese acquisition of U.S. businesses
set a new all-time record last year, and it is on pace to shatter that record
this year. (See if I understand. John Kerry offered $17M to Vietnam to deal with Global
Warming. The idea is to build tighter ties to the countries around China, like Vietnam,
to buffer China's
new expansionism. We will now borrow that $17M from China....~Bob)

Excerpt: At first glance, the training camp appears no
different from the many others shown in propaganda videos posted by al-Qaeda’s
affiliate in Syria.
Hooded recruits in camouflage shoot at targets or march in formation under the
black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. But look closer and the
“fighters” appear quite small.

Brown’s Move to New Hampshire Fuels Talk
of Senate Race. By Annie Linskey

Excerpt: Former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown plans to
move to New Hampshire,
the latest sign that he’s considering a U.S. Senate bid there, which would
complicate Democrats' effort to hold their majority in the chamber. Brown, 54,
has found a buyer for his Wrentham home and is set to close on that deal this
week, Andrew I. Glincher, managing partner and chief executive officer at
Brown’s employer Nixon Peabody LLP, said in an interview. Brown will continue
to work out of the law firm’s Boston office
because he isn’t licensed to practice law in New Hampshire, Glincher said. (Dems like
carpetbagger. See Hillary and Bobby Kennedy in NY. GOP not so much. ~Bob)

Excerpt: While most of the early Obamacare rollout problems
have focused on the uninsured and those who get their policies through the
individual market exchanges, more than 150 million Americans who get coverage
through their employers are likely to feel the fallout as well.

Excerpt: The White House asked insurance companies to extend
the deadline for Obamacare policyholder payments to assure coverage.
The chaos is frightening. A year ago they said you can keep your health
care plan, and today they're saying don't get sick in January.

Excerpt: Think the canceled health policies hurt the
Obamacare cause? There’s another political time bomb lurking that could explode
not too long before next year’s elections: rate hikes for small businesses. Like
the canceled individual health plans, it’s another example of a tradeoff that
health care experts have long known about, as the new rules for health
insurance prices create winners and losers. But most Americans won’t become
aware of it until some small business employees learn that their premiums are
going up because of a law called — oops — the Affordable Care Act.

Quote

Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will
end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum. --H. G. Wells (Envisioning Detroit, Chicago,
LA, etc...~Bob)

Excerpt: The ancient city ofJerusalem,
which normally basks in fierce heat, was dusted with a light covering of snow
during a freak blizzard. And snow fell on the streets of Egypt for the first
time in 112 years as one of the worst winter storms to hit the Middle East in
living memory set in.The rare sight of pristine white precipitation greeted
stunned residents of Cairo this morning who took to social media to express
their shock at the unsettling weather in the usually sweltering capital. (Al
Gore blames...~Bob)